Page 63 of The Cabin
The easel smells…fresh, like newly sawn wood. It almost looks like he made it. Being a carpenter, it shouldn’t surprise me that he’d make one instead of buying it, but the gesture touches me.
I immediately take the easel, sketchbook, a mug of water, and the paints out to the dock and set up. I’m frustrated at first because I’ve lost the knack of it, but after a few false starts, I start to feel it coming back…like Nathan and the guitar.
Before I know it, I’ve been painting for several hours. The completed painting is…not my best, but it’s recognizably the lake from my dock. I’m proud of it, maybe inordinately so. Winslow Homer, I’m not, but I feel good for having done it.
The expulsion of creativity is as much an antitoxin to the poison of misery and despair and sorrow as the peace of the lake has been, as sleeping in has been, as eating well has been. As much as that dinner on my porch with Nathan.
I gingerly tear the page from the book; Nathan is out on the lake, fishing. I heard him motor out early this morning, and he’s been on the far side of the lake ever since. I wedge the painting in his door, between door and doorpost.
I wouldn’t say I’m alive, yet. But…maybe, just maybe, I’m feeling the first glimmers of renewal. Like a seed germinating deep in the thick black wet soil.
I’m not okay. I’m very, very far from anything like okay. I think about Adrian just about once every other breath. I still wake up in the middle of the night and reach for him and tear up and clutch my pillow and scream into it when he’s not there.
But…I laughed, last night. I painted, today.
It’s improvement, if infinitesimal. But still, better is better.One Little Thing At A TimeI haven’t seen Nadia for days. I wake up early, and she sleeps in. But we have a system—I make her coffee and put it in my old hunting thermos and leave it on her porch. She returns it sometime later in the morning. I made her an easel and got her some watercolor stuff, and now she’s out there most of the day, painting. On the dock, in the yard, under the trees, facing the cabins. She left me one, the first one she did, as a kind of thank-you. It’s good. Like me and guitar, I’d say don’t quit your day job, but it’s damn good.
It’s hard to read Adrian’s story. I put it off, sometimes for days at a time.
More from the heroine’s POV:Sometimes, I wish he would just…push a little. Nudge me out of my shell. Because as much as I like it in my shell, and as much as I’d get a little spiky and snotty if he DID nudge, part of me wants to be drawn out of myself. I think he’s afraid of hurting me. Of scaring me. Of getting too close too fast even for his own liking.
Just a little, at first, I’d tell him, if he asked. A walk, maybe. Take me fishing, because while it’s boring as hell, it’s something different, something to do besides try and pretend I’m cool, I’m fine, this is fine. I dunno. I just know he’s there and I’m here, and we keep sort of slipping off of each other, not quite connecting, because my hurt is deep and my shell is thick, and so is his. I think we’re also like two soap bubbles floating through the air, bouncing off each other, connecting for a moment, separating.I read a bit more, another chapter, but I keep thinking about that part. Don’t push, just nudge a little.
All right. Let’s give it a whirl. I’m bored and lonely again, and I’d like to talk to her.
It’s early afternoon. She just quit painting and has packed up and gone inside. It’s a gorgeous day, one of those days that’s on the verge between late summer and not quite fall. Cool at night, but still warm during the day. I stuff a sweater in my backpack, a couple bottles of water, my hunting compass, and a package of jerky.
Before I can reconsider, I head over and knock on her door.
She opens the door enough to frame her body. “Hi. What’s up?”
“I was thinking I’d go for a little hike in the woods. Nothing strenuous, just…walk around the lake a bit. And I thought maybe you’d like to come along.”
I’m tempted to overexplain, to ramble, so I chew on the inside of my cheek to keep my mouth shut.
She just stares at me, thinking. “I…”
“If you don’t want to, I get it.”
She huffs. “No, I…I do. Actually. I could use the exercise.” She’s wearing short cloth shorts with ragged, rolled-up hems and a baggy T-shirt—painting clothes. “Let me just put on some jeans.”
